2 Million Volunteers Take Part In The Star Wars: The Old Republic Beta

Betas are typically restricted, a testing ground for online services, a chance to test design balance, but when you're attempting to craft an MMO to take over the world a few select thousand just doesn't cut it. You need 2 million people to help you out!

EA has just announced that over 2 million gamers helped test Star Wars: The Old Republic, and that number makes sense on a whole different set of levels. To begin with, EA is expecting a huge launch, so it makes sense to test their server capability on a grand scale, secondly -- 2 million people already engaged with the new game you are about to launch? That's some pretty solid pre-release marketing right there.

Apparently EA had over 250,000 people playing concurrently and over 750,000 unique users over the Thanksgiving weekend. Solid numbers considering EA has gone on record saying the game needs 500,000 users to turn a profit.

But bizarrely, despite the fact that Australians were actually involved in the beta, we still don't have a local release date for the game.

Im tempted to Amazon the game, but i dont want to have to lose my character if a server change comes around, the only thing hanging over my head currently... And i cant seem to find an answer if they will allow transfer of characters from world to world :/

Hey Dan,
The game is region free. Cant remember where the post was, but bioware said the game was not IP restricted.
Also Amazon should of sent you a code, activate that via origin, thenn go register on the SWOR website, you can even pre-download the client if you want to (20gig though)

I got it on Amazon, even though I have a copy pre-ordered locally. I'm not going to wait for something we should have. Only downside, get early access but might not be able to play after that until the game arrives, which will be after Christmas

Unofficial oceanic servers will happen. They always do. As far as actuall servers hosted here in Aus, we shall see. I doubt it will happen though.
And as long as you are playing on the west coast servers your ping will be sub 200ms. Mine was around 180ms for the whole weekend.
Better than I ever got from any other mmo even using tunneling.

Honestly based off what I played in the beta, the launch content is already pretty smooth. Though the Bounty Hunter & Sith Agent starter planet is pretty terrible, it's a design issue not a content issue.

The problems I was having with the game were more infrastructure related than gameplay. Issues with logging in, reconnecting to the server after disconnections, lag spikes etc.

Got into the Beta - not as bad as some of the comments made it out to be... the primary storylines are pretty cool - though whether the game will be like AOC - game was great until you got past lvl 10 and then went bad - very bad, remains to be seen

I played through a weekend beta and to be honest, quite enjoyed it. I'm not convinced it is enough for me to abandon wow but I think that I might at least level to max level on a couple of toons to see the story. I'm not sure it will have enough end game content but time will tell on that one.

The game is really solid, and managed to get this jaded player interested in mmo's again. To anyone who hasn't played it, it feels like Kotor with other people in the gameworld. Also, no auto attacks or spammy abilities made the combat actually fun(!!!).

Definately going to import it. Given that there is no date at all yet, it will be at least a month after 'international' release that its officially available in our region.

To the people saying this is fresh and original...are you on crack????????? This is the most gratuitous WoW clone i've seen in a while. Sure, the setting is different, but the mechanics are WoW to a big fat T. Pay and play if you must, but don't confuse a change in setting with a huge leap in MMORPG innovation.

And WoW was just a clone of all the others before it. Age old argument.
Does TOR follow the same formula as WoW, yes obviously. Does it do it better than WoW? Most people will say a big hell yes to that.
And what did WoW do better when it launched that the others before it? Not much, it just targeted a bigger audience.
TOR has enough to make it feel different to WoW. Companions, fully voiced, star wars setting, actual choices that do matter. Thats enough right there to make WoW feel and look like the 7yr old game it is.
And besides, people are generally sick of the fantasy setting with dragons and elves etc in there mmos.

Cosmetic changes. The grind is still there, the elitism is still there, the hamster wheel still turns. I saw nothing in the beta to make it a worthy purchase for anyone looking for something different to WoW.

As a company EA has the right idea. The formula is a slick way to stuff their coffers with easy cash, but from an innovation standpoint it's a non-event. It's pretty obvious they are looking to cash in on disgruntled WoW players.

Cause WoW has an engaging single player questing storyline.. LOL. TOR has taken what WoW does and improved upon it. Why fix something that isn't broken? WoW is old, stale, and plays that way. TOR is fresh, new, engaging.

People saying this is a WoW Clone are WoW MMO Babies. They don't remember the MMO experience before WoW or never even had the experience before WoW. Look at everything WoW does and it was taken from other MMO's before it, they just polished it better at the time and 7 years later they still cant polish it properly every patch.

I would have to disagree with you as well LukeN, in regards to WoW's target audience at launch. Vanilla WoW is still probably the most challenging any MMO has been at launch(although BC would give it a run for its money). The target audience of wow used to be Hardcore gamers, once they started to get the casuals pouring in the game got dumbed down to the point where anyone can play it by smashing their face on the keyboard.

If anyone doesn't agree go run the LFR tool on WoW now...

Go ahead I'll wait...
Done? Good, see. You can roflstomp it without vent/coordination and you can lose anywhere up to 6 people and still carry the bads to gear/loot.

Further proof of how easy it is. Look up Remullara on Frostmourne.
I hit 85 on Saturday, I have full 376 ilevel heroic epics as well as cleared the first 4 bosses on DS in LFR and 10man Pug...

For ppl looking for what the unofficial aussie servers will be watch the forums at this link http://toroz.com.au/ a group of people from both the pvp and pve mindsets are setting up a very co-ordinated effort to get as many aussie guilds provisioned on the same servers (bioware are allowing ppl to set up guilds pre launch and will place guilds on servers based on their friends/enemies settings). Once this info is released the heaviest populated pvp/pve servers will be announced as the 'official' servers for the aussie community. It's good to see this kind of effort being put into building a throving aussie community at launch.

Thank you heaps for this link Kolreth, I have been looking for some sort of indication as to where the Aussie Community will be on TOR but havent been able to find anything. And AusMMO is useless in the matter.

Was thinking about pre-ordering with Amazon but didn't want to risk being locked to US servers. With something like this, I'd rather play with people I know (Aussies), even if it is on a fake "Oceanic" server.

Usually they dont release with fake Oceanic, but then change some of the US Servers to fake Oceanic after launch. Rift was launched the same way, and they allowed free realm transfers when they did create the Oceanic realms. So hopefully EA can take a page from that book.